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On alternating Tuesdays, Allan “Doc” Dorison operates on a specific part of popular culture.

by Allan Dorison

Webster’s has four definitions for the word villain.

Definition 1: an uncouth person. Definition 2: a deliberate scoundrel or criminal. Definition 3: a character in a story or play who opposes the hero. Definition 4: one blamed for a particular evil or difficulty.

For this instance I’m going to focus on definition 3… with which I disagree.   I think, in the best cases at least, it’s the hero who opposes the villain. That’s what drives the plot.

Personally I have a hard time relating to the good guys. What’s to relate to? I know it’s not really their job and they feel some moral obligation, but a lot of them are either rich people who fight crime when they’re not taking knitting classes, or they’re scientists, or wannabe scientists, who just didn’t read the recipe right. Green Arrow? Making up for being a spoiled brat. Captain America? A lab rat. The Hulk? An accidental lab rat that gets angry. Superman came from Krypton, got his powers by environmental accident and his one big virtue is that he doesn’t get angry. Yawn.

Now, let’s take a look at some of my favorite villains:

Magneto: a Holocaust survivor whose actions are driven by the purpose of protecting the mutant race from suffering a similar fate.

Dr. Doom: the son of gypsies, born in Latveria when it was ruled by an unnamed nobleman called the Baron. Doom’s mother was a witch, a fact his father tried to hide from the young boy; when his father is killed by the Baron’s men unjustly, Doom discovers his mother’s occult instruments and swears revenge on the Baron.

Penguin: Deformed, picked on as a kid, the Penguin chooses to be with penguins rather than with people.

What do most of these villains have in common? They were shunned, looked down upon, and ridiculed by society. There’s clear motivation to their actions. If your people were being persecuted wouldn’t you stop at nothing to stop the persecution? If you were cast out by society, wouldn’t you feel even the slightest need for revenge?

I can even understand Galactus’ motivation. The dude’s hungry. How can you blame the guy? If you were on the galaxy’s equivalent of a desert island and the only thing to eat was, say, planet Earth, wouldn’t you eat it?

Now don’t get me wrong, not all villains are misunderstood souls. Many of them just want to break $h!t up and rob banks. Hell, if not for the villain the superhero would sit on his a$$ and stare at the street. They’re the active part of the formula. Heroes are the reactive.

Most inert chemicals are pretty boring with out a catalyst to shake them up and make them move. Just ask Reed Richards. I’m sure he can bore you to death with a fuller explanation, while the Wolverine slices his way through the answer…

Whoa, did you just read Wolverine?!?  Now you may ask yourself, isn’t he a hero? And I’ll answer that for you. Yes, but he falls into the category of hero that I can associate with – the anti-hero. While I’m bored by the likes of Aquaman and Captain Marvel, the hero with a heart of darkness and not a heart of gold will always get my attention.

Wolverine constantly struggles with turning into an animal.  He has to constantly fight with his baser urges to kill and maim. Another anti-hero is Batman, who actively wages a war on crime governed only by his own moral boundaries.  For Batman how far is to far? Is it okay  for him to break a criminal’s arm, as long as he doesn’t kill them?  Where does that line get drawn?  and redrawn?  you get the picture.

I also enjoy Spider-Man, who struggles with the guilt of losing his Uncle Ben, when he could have saved him.  That guilt, and Ben’s ultimate piece of advice to him, puts a troubled Peter on and above the streets of New York to fight crime.  These are the kind of heroes that I want to read about.

I hope I shed some light on the difference between the crappy and the credible good guys and hope that you start rooting for the villains. Besides, who would like to have a nice stiff drink with after work Captain America or the Shocker. You know who I would choose.

Allan Dorison is the event and conference manager for a major financial bank in New York City. He has previously served in a leadership capacity on the executive boards of several comics based organizations. His video parodies of pop culture phenomena can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/hexo66.

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